One day, a couple finds a box with a button by their front door; no note is attached and they have no clue about who has sent it or why. A man in a black suit and hat knocks on their door and explains that if they push the button, they will get fifty-thousand dollars. The only downside is that someone, somewhere, will die in exchange. But there’s no need to worry, luckily the person in question will be a stranger.

Once the man has left the house, the confrontation begins: while Arthur, the husband, is completely against the idea, Norma, his wife, is quite intrigued, “Aren’t you curious?” she asks him. They open the box and discover there is nothing but a button. Arthur throws the box away, but Norma recovers it and presses the button. The same day, Arthur is pushed onto the subway tracks and dies. In turn, Norma receives fifty-thousand dollars as compensation. When, in despair, she asks the man who brought the box, why the person to die was her husband, he answers “Did you really think you knew your husband?”

This is the synopsis of Button, Button, a short story written by Richard Matheson, the writer known as the master of fantastic. The story was also adapted for an episode of The Twilight Zone, in 1986 and, in 2009, for a film called The Box.

The reason I’m talking about Matheson and Button, Button is that this story and The Twilight Zone,  the legendary TV show about people facing extraordinary circumstances, are the reasons why I’ve become fascinated by stories that, although set in our everyday reality, border the world of fantastic and supernatural.

So one day I asked myself, wouldn’t be great to have a platform entirely devoted to all the strange stories of the world? So here comes Strangestories.info, the home of the main TV shows and stories in the so-called ‘fantastic’ genre. We are talking about the already mentioned The Twilight Zone, of course, but also Amazing Stories, Black Mirror, Night Visions The outer limits, Tales of the Unexpected, Night Gallery, and the stories of masters such as Richard Matheson and Roald Dahl.

As a side dish to the masters of the genre, you’ll find my Strange Stories, a short story collection blending mystery, fantastic, thriller and sci-fi, focusing on human obsessions and future utopian and dystopian societies, where even utopian ones can become dystopian, as history has shown. All these stories are told by the voice of Ace, a man whose brain is being exploited by masterminds acting behind the scenes to explore the future and, sometimes, the past for their own ends .

Welcome to the world of the strange stories.